You Must Not Remain Hidden to Yourself

By RABBI MICHAEL LATZ

Parsahat Ki Tetze (Deuteronomy 21:10-25:17)

I have often found this season—the Hebrew month of Elul, immediately preceding Tishrei and the High Holy Days—to be some ironic for the Jewish people and a seriously joke God played on the rabbis. On the one hand, we begin again: Rosh Hashanah is approaching, school begins, the political campaigns get into full swing. It is a time of beginning anew.

And yet, if we look to the Torah and our parashat (this week’s portion), we are reminded of endings. The midst of Deuteronomy, Moses is preparing the Israelites to enter the promised land, for his own disappointment about not having God’s blessing to step foot on the land, and his impending death. Our days grow physically shorter, as we read in the text of Moses’ life drawing to a close.

But before he dies, he spends several weeks reminding the Children of Israel about their moral, ethical and spiritual obligations to the God who freed them from Egyptian bondage. This week’s parashat, Ki Tetze guides us through an array of laws and precepts to build a just society. Indeed, there is a lot of good advice found in the letters and words of our ancient tradition.

Hidden amidst conversations about capital punishment, difficult children, appropriate dress codes, property rights, and animal rights, a somewhat obscure phrase leapt off the pages.

The text reads: Lo tuchal l'hitaleim. (Deuteronomy 22:3) you must not remain hidden to yourself.

Onkelos, the author of one of the earliest translations of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) into Aramaic, commented emphatically: "You have no right to hide yourself."

Why were our Biblical ancestors so concerned about hiding oneself—especially since this text faces such weighty social issues as war and capital punishment?

Our early rabbis were wise. As they divided up the sections of the Torah, they knew that we would read these verses in the early days of Elul, in the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah. We read these words as we are charged to engage in the work of Cheshbon Hanefesh: A spiritual accounting of our souls. God calls us to look inward, to examine our lives and our responsibilities, our hopes, our dreams and our behavior.

Lo tuchal l'hitaleim. (Deuteronomy 22:3) you must not remain hidden to yourself.

And so we ask, as we begin the work of Cheshbon Hanefesh—the accounting of our souls—what does it mean to remain hidden to ourselves? Why would we? And what is the spiritual remedy?

I find it particularly ironic that these words are juxtaposed only a few verses later with the following: Lo yihi’eh cli gever al isha: A woman must not put on a man’s clothing, nor shall a man wear a woman’s clothing for it is “to-evah” profoundly troubling to God.” Now really? Whose to say that there isn’t holiness present in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy?

But it wasn’t about clothes. It was our ancestors attempt to say “you gotta be yourself!” Don’t hide behind someone else’s costume.

Each of us hides pieces of ourselves. For some, they are profound. They hide their fears of a changing and more diverse world behind two tons of granite with the 10 commandments on them. That somehow that will solve the challenges of public education or bring morality into our lives if they offend in the courtroom.

Others they are smaller. We tell ourselves small lies about our needs, our desires, our dreams. We suppress the truth of our hearts, the longing of our souls. As we remove stumbling blocks before the blind, we need to remove the stumbling blocks from within ourselves.

During this month of Elul, of spiritual preparation before Rosh Hashanah, we look inward and we ask ourselves the deep questions: What is blocking me from being my true self? Why? How can I remove it?

To be holy, we must be positively engaged in the welfare of all beings in our world. Nachmanides.

What is the consequence: We can’t do the work of Cheshbon HaNefesh—the accounting of our souls that we need to do in the month of Elul. Those who hide cannot find themselves.